Trump’s national security adviser Mike Waltz is obviously having a bad week, having made a mistake that was not very national-security-adviser of him.
Trump has maintained that he has confidence in Waltz publicly, though reporting on what happened behind the scenes suggests he has lingering suspicions about the top adviser. So while Waltz appears to in the clear for now, that doesn’t mean Trump is regret-free about the whole ordeal, for more than one reason.
The special election for Waltz’s old House seat — the seat that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis held before being elected governor and the one that Waltz resigned in order to become the guy who added an Atlantic editor to a war plans group chat on Signal — is coming up on April 1. The man running as a Republican to fill the seat, state Sen. Randy Fine, has been substantially out-fundraised by his Democratic opponent, a progressive school teacher named Josh Weil. And the race is much closer than national Republicans expected it to be. One local recent poll suggests that the race is within the margin of error even though President Trump won that district by more than 30 points in the fall.
DeSantis and other national Republicans are already actively blaming Fine for the race not being the blowout the party anticipated, saying the Republican waited too long to get ads on local television and failed to keep up with the Weil, who was able to raise $10 million by campaigning on an anti-Trump platform. Many of his donors were reportedly out of state.
So MAGAworld is pulling out all the stops to make sure Republican voters in the area turn out. Donald Trump Jr. is encouraging people to go vote for Fine, painting his opponent as someone backed by radical leftists. Steve Bannon hosted Fine on his WarRoom podcast. A PAC tied to Elon Musk is pouring money into Fine’s race, too.
And now Trump himself is stepping in to help campaign for the party’s lackluster candidate. Trump is expected to be the special speaker at a virtual town hall for Fine and Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis tonight. Patronis is running for Matt Gaetz’s old seat, so Trump is actually stepping in to deal with the problem he created by appointing two House Republicans to positions within his administration while the party navigates its razor-thin majority in the House. That appears to be part of the calculus behind the administration’s decision to pull Rep. Elise Stefanik’s (R-NY) nomination to be United Nations ambassador, as my colleague Josh Marshall outlines here.
As House and Senate Republicans attempt to pull off the passage of Trump’s fiscal agenda in coming weeks, on an aggressive, Trump-imposed timeline, they can’t afford to lose another member to Trump’s poor picking.
Nothing To See Here
Attorney General Pam Bondi made it official this afternoon, and put rest to any speculation that the Justice Department would actually look into something worthy of looking into. Like other Trump allies, Bondi blurred the lines on the classification of the information that was shared in the now-infamous Signal chat when responding to questions about whether there might be a criminal investigation into the matter. Per the Times:
“It was sensitive information, not classified, and inadvertently released,” Ms. Bondi said, while praising the military operation that ensued.
“What we should be talking about is it was a very successful mission,” she said, before quickly accusing Democrats from previous administrations of mishandling classified information.
Maine School Officials Stand Up To Trump
School officials in Maine announced on Thursday they will not be complying with a proposed agreement from the Trump administration that would force them to bar trans athletes from participating in girls’ sports.
The announcement from the school officials comes in response to a federal investigation by the U.S. Health and Human Services that earlier this month warned the Maine Department of Education, Maine Principals’ Association and a Maine high school that they were in violation of Title IX because of the participation of trans athletes in school sports.
The health department gave the institutions ten days to comply with a voluntary agreement to ban trans athletes or face the consequences.
The district in question said in a letter to the community on Thursday that it is not complying because it will instead “continue to follow state law and the Maine Human Rights Act,” according to the Associated Press.
Maine Gov. Janet Mills and Trump took public jabs at each other recently during a meeting at the White House when the President threatened to pull federal funding from Maine if the state does not comply with his executive order barring trans athletes from athletics.
— Emine Yücel
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Rooting for Josh Weil (D) to win this special election!! If he does win the GOP majority in the House is then one seat
Turns out the FO part is less fun than the FA.
Will Jeffries become the next speaker of the House?
Trump has maintained that he has confidence in Waltz publicly, though reporting on what happened behind the scenes suggests he has lingering suspicions about the top adviser.
National Security Advisor?
Didn’t Donnie have problems with the first guy in that position during his first administration?
Since there couldn’t be any questions about his judgement, it’s surely some really bad luck.